Atom Egoyan

Director

With fifteen feature films and related projects, Atom Egoyan has won numerous awards including five prizes at the Cannes Film Festival (including the Grand Prix, International Critics Awards, and Ecumenical Jury Prizes), two Academy Award nominations, eight Genie Awards, prizes from the National Board of Review, and an award for Best International Adaptation at The Frankfurt Book Fair. Egoyan won the 2010 Douglas Sirk Award from the Hamburg Film Festival, joining other career honors from festivals and events in Tokyo, Jerusalem, Reykjavik, Las Palmas, Hong Kong, Cairo, and The Panorama of European Cinema in Athens. He directed DEVIL’S KNOT, a feature about the West Memphis Three, which premieres at TIFF, 2013.

Twenty years ago, three young boys were found murdered in a forest. The crime scene was appalling and -- most mysteriously -- there was no hard evidence. Who could have committed these horrors? If the evil force that killed the boys couldn't be found, then a comprehensible solution needed to be conjured. For all the talk of Satanic ritual and blood sacrifices discussed in the case, it is my firm belief that the only real act of magic was performed by the prosecution team as they convinced a jury to find three young men guilty in the complete absence of any physical proof.